June 14, 2007
Bowling
Green, Ky. - A continued hot and dry summer could have Kentucky facing a historic drought, state climatologist Stuart Foster says.
“We’re in a rapidly emerging drought situation in Kentucky and people don’t have to look far to see evidence of it,” said Foster, director of the Kentucky Climate Center at Western Kentucky University.
The drought began earlier this spring across the southeastern United States and is spreading northward, he said.
So how severe is it?
“We looked back through historical records to see how the current conditions compared to previous years,” Foster said. “The alarming thing was that we had to go back to 1930 and 1941 to find years where we were in similar circumstances throughout the state at this time of year.” (A drought report from the Kentucky Climate Center at WKU is available online at http://kyclim.wku.edu/feature.htm.)
The drought of 1930 is widely recognized as the most severe drought in Kentucky history with the driest July on record coupled with record-breaking heat, he said. Kentucky’s record high of 114 degrees was set July 28, 1930, in Greensburg. Bowling Green recorded 113 degrees that day.
“Many weather stations across Kentucky recorded temperatures of 100 degrees or more for 14 to 16 days in July 1930,” Foster said.
That’s not to say that the summer of 2007 will be another 1930, he said. This year’s drought could break like the severe drought of 1941.
A dry spell that began in 1940 continued into the spring of 1941 with precipitation deficits growing to record levels across Kentucky. Unlike 1930, however, a change in the weather pattern brought near to above normal precipitation in June, July and August, he said.
“We don’t know for sure what’s going to happen next,” Foster said, though the Climate Prediction Center expects the drought to persist in Kentucky and spread farther to the north.
One concern is the intensity of the drought across the south. “Moisture that fuels summer thunderstorms comes from the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “The fact that it’s dry in the south may act to reduce the frequency and intensity of precipitation in Kentucky. While the expectation of a more active hurricane season could help us, tropical systems often have little or no impact on Kentucky.”
Unless weather patterns change, the drought will continue to build as soil moisture becomes depleted and temperatures rise, he said. That would mean additional problems for the state’s farmers who saw wheat and other crops damaged by a late season freeze and could create shortages for municipal water systems, Foster said.
“The fact that it’s been dry early in the year has raised a red flag and put us in a position where we’ve become very vulnerable,” he said. “As we get into summer, much of our precipitation normally comes from hit and miss thunderstorms. The fact that we’re already dry and we haven’t seen the heat of summer yet it’s possible that drought conditions will intensify rapidly in the next few weeks.”
Precipitation deficits as of June 14, according to the Kentucky Climate Center.
Site Normal Year to date Deficit
Bowling Green 24.53 14.65 9.88
Covington 20.09 14.79 5.30
Jackson 22.68 12.87 9.81
Louisville 21.41 16.73 4.68
Lexington 21.47 15.48 5.99
Paducah 23.32 18.51 4.81
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For information, contact Stuart Foster at (270) 745-5983.
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